By Douglas Quan, Postmedia News, Apr. 1 2011

VANCOUVER — A Canada Border Services Agency investigation late last year found that 19 employees violated internal policies by distributing “confidential and sensitive” information about the bizarre case of a young Asian man who impersonated an elderly Caucasian on a flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver, documents obtained under access to information show. Under questioning, many employees admitted emailing the protected “intelligence alert” to friends and family because of the “amazing” and “extraordinary” nature of the case.

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Abdul Karim Hekmat, March 29, 2011. Sydney Morning Herald

We get impatient at the slightest delay – imagine being in detention for years. In the past several months, there have been increasing non-violent protests at detention centres across Australia that have not been getting much attention. Unlike the people in the Middle East, they do not want to topple a regime, but like them they desperately want freedom. As a former detainee, I can see why they riot, self-harm or escape into the wilderness, even temporarily. I was an Afghan refugee who fled the Taliban regime and spent five months in the Curtin detention centre in 2001. Philip Ruddock, the former immigration minister, described Curtin as the ”most primitive” processing centre. Ill-equipped and without proper medical facilities and accommodation, it housed about 900 detainees.

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Roma refugee complained of chest pain, Toronto inquest told
Mon Mar 21 2011. Nicholas Keung Toronto Star Immigration Reporter

A Roma refugee who died of heart failure in immigration detention was thought to be faking chest pains to avoid his imminent deportation, a Toronto inquest has heard. A visibly frail Jan Szamko was spotted in the immigration holding centre on Rexdale Blvd., soiled in his own feces and urine, on Dec. 6, 2009, just hours before his scheduled removal flight. The 31-year-old man was taken in a wheelchair to a segregated holding area and then transferred to the Toronto West Detention Centre, where he died two days later. An autopsy found he died of heart failure.

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The Canadian Press. Date: Friday Mar. 18, 2011 6:28 AM ET

VANCOUVER — With the Tories on the verge of an election, a Salvadoran father and refugee claimant who helped guerilla forces resist a brutal dictatorship in the Latin American country is heading to Ottawa to press the prime minister on immigration. Jose Figueroa and his 12-year-old son depart from Vancouver Friday on a cross-Canada bus tour, aiming to raise awareness about flaws in immigration law. The final destination is Ottawa, where they hope to present a 1,300-name petition to politicians and gain a reversal on a deportation order handed down to him last May. The father of three, who’s lived in Langley, B.C. for more than 13 years, was devastated after immigration officials suddenly reviewed his pending refugee claim and declared he was inadmissable.

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Thursday 17 March 2011 The New York Times News Service | Report

Immigration enforcement in the United States is plagued by unjust treatment of detainees, including inadequate access to lawyers and insufficient medical care, and by the excessive use of prison-style detention, the human rights arm of the Organization of American States said Thursday. The group, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, issued those findings in a report that also took aim at a federal program that allows county and state law enforcement officials to enforce federal immigration laws. The report said the government had failed to ensure that local police were not singling out people by race or detaining illegal immigrants on the pretext of investigating crimes. The commission recommended that the federal government cancel the program, known as 287(g).

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